New Kensington businessman, 95, publishes book of Internet jokes
Chuck Booth has been many things during his 95 years: entrepreneur, war hero, successful businessman and community activist.
Now the New Kensington resident can add “published author” to the list.
Booth, who made his fortune running and growing Burrell Construction and Supply, the business his father started, self-published a soft-cover book titled: “The World's Funniest Internet Jokes,” in November.
“I printed 1,000 books, and I'll probably end up with 900 of them,” Booth said with a chuckle. “I've given more away than I've sold.”
Collecting humor
Booth said he did not come up with the 102 pages of jokes on his own. They were collected using a device that many older people shun but he embraces, the personal computer.
Friends would email him jokes they came across while surfing the Internet, or were sent to them by other friends.
“So,whenever I'd get jokes, I would print them out and put them in a binder, and I thought, ‘Someday maybe I'll publish a book of them.' ” Booth said.
He did that for about 10 years.
Producing a three-inch thick binder from a desk in his office at the Burrell Group offices in New Kensington, he said, “I have about 15 of these binders.”
“I thought, ‘All the jokes I've got, what the am I going to do with them?' ” Booth said.
Finally, he decided to follow through on his original idea and put some of them in a book.
3 basic rules
He sifted through the hundreds of jokes contained in the binders and picked out what he thinks are the best. Booth used three basic rules in making his choices.
“I tried to stay away from the jokes about politics and religion, although one may slip in once a while,” Booth said with a grin. “And I tried to stay away from the crude ones.”
Not that sex is completely out of bounds in the book, but it's far from “in-your-face” type of humor. For example:
“A man goes to a shrink and says, ‘Doctor, my wife is unfaithful to me. Every evening, she goes to Larry's bar and picks up men. In fact, she sleeps with anybody who asks her! I'm going crazy. What do you think I should do?'‘Relax,' says the Doctor. ‘Take a deep breath and calm down. Now, tell me exactly — where is Larry's bar?' ”
After making his selections for the book, Booth sent them to Julie Gorges of Palm Desert, Calif., a former newspaper reporter and daughter of a good friend, John Hacker. She edited them.
“It wasn't too heavy duty,” Gorges said. “I got to read jokes all day long.”
Booth and Gorges broke them up into themed chapters such as “Rock of Ages,” which contains jokes pertaining to senior citizens, and the self-explanatory, “Marriage: For Better or Worse.”
“I think he did a really good job,” she said. “With all the jokes he had to choose from, he chose well. It's a family book. He cracked me up.”
Life and laughter
For the cover art, Booth enlisted well-known Lower Burrell artist Charles “Bud” Gibbons to provide a rendering of a smiling blonde woman with a laptop computer.
When all the pieces were completed, Gorgos shipped them to a printer in Nebraska who had printed a book she had written with her father. The books are available through Amazon.com.
“This is one of the most fun jobs I've had because I got to help a 95-year-old man who is one of the sweetest men I know,” Gorges said. “To help him realize his dream and publish this book he's been talking about for years, was an honor and a privilege.”
Booth said he decided to publish a book of jokes because he knows the world can be a rough place with little for people to laugh about. He said it's his way of trying to counter that.
“People who laugh seem to enjoy life more,” he said.
Booth said he has been blessed throughout his life with relatively good health, two wonderful wives — the first of whom, Laura Lee, died in 1998 after 58 years together — fine children and grandchildren and a very good business.
“I try to be happy and have fun, but I'm smart enough to know when you get sick, you don't give a damn about anything,” he said.
As for those who might say that being healthy and wealthy makes it easy for him to be happy, Booth quipped: “You have a lot of rich guys who die young, you know. Maybe I don't have that much money.”
A Depression opportunity
Booth's father, Charles H. Booth Sr., worked for the State Construction Co. in New Kensington which started in 1915, and became its office manager. When it ran into financial difficulties during the Great Depression, he and some other employees took it over. In 1935, Charles Booth Sr. bought out the other partners and established Burrell Construction.
Chuck remembers going to work in the family's new business.
“When the company started in 1935, I was a senior in high school and I was making 15 cents an hour,” he said.
Booth attended Washington and Jefferson College for three years and then joined the Army Air Corps in 1944, serving as a bomber pilot in Europe.
When he returned from the war, he became more involved with Burrell Construction as it expanded. He sold the company in 1988, turning his attention to Burrell Mining Products Inc., a subsidiary and a principal business of the Burrell Group Inc., which also provides consulting and business services. Booth is the president and, despite his advanced years, drives himself to work every day with no thought of retiring.
“I'm still fairly active with it,” Booth said. “What would I do hanging around the house?”
His second wife, Trudy, is wary of that prospect.
“I don't like the days when he comes home and says, ‘There's nothing going on at the office,' ” she said. “He'd rather have a crisis, a challenge.”
She said he has not read every joke in her husband's book but has scanned through them.
“I laughed at pretty much all of them,” she said.
Local roots stay strong
The Booths are active in community affairs. Chuck was one of the key people in pushing for the establishment of a Penn State University branch campus in New Kensington. Several years ago, he was involved in a now-dormant movement to lobby the state for a new bridge, dubbed the A-K Connector, spanning the Allegheny River between New Kensington and the Mills mall interchange in Frazer.
While the state said it didn't have the funds to build it, Booth believes the need for it hasn't changed.
“If you don't have good roads then your towns go down the drain,” he said.
He has a vested interest in helping New Kensington survive because he loves the town where he was born and grew up. Although he has the resources to live practically anywhere, he continues to live there.
“Anybody who makes a few bucks goes to Fox Chapel or Sewickley, but hell, I was born here and I like the people,” Booth said.
When in the company of prominent people from those communities, Booth said, “When I say I'm from New Kensington, you can hear a pin drop.”
Leonard “Skeets” Paletta of New Kensington and John Framel of Allegheny Township first met Booth when the A-K Connector group was formed. They became good friends.
“It tells me he is a hell of a man and I knew that before,” Paletta said of Booth's love for his hometown. “I talk to him once or twice a month and stop in to see him. You can talk about anything, which is something you can't say about a lot of people in his position.”
“He's a real down-to-earth person who is very, very outgoing, and he is a very giving person,” he said.”People come to him, and he seems to help everyone.”
When told that Booth had just published a book of jokes, Paletta couldn't resist giving his friend a zinger. “I'm surprised by that,” he said. “There's a joke right there.”
Framel said he has exchanged jokes with Booth in the past, and already has a copy of the book.
“He indicated that he just wanted to do it because he thought it was something that was humorous and light and thought it would give some light entertainment to people who get bad news from other sources,” Framel said. “I said, ‘Chuck, go at it.' ”
“He is probably one of the finest men I have ever met,” he said. “I have never heard him speak ill of anyone.”
Tom Yerace is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 724-226-4675.
